36 Bulletin 827, U. S. Dept of Agriculture. 
fiber content and higher in fat. Cowpea is higher in crude-protein 
content than alfalfa, lower in fiber, and higher in fat. Peanut hay 
is not equal to these hays in crude-protein content, but is low in 
fiber and high in fat. 
Sudan grass is frequently sown in mixtures with cowpeas or soy 
beans for hay and facilitates the curing of the hay. At the McXeill 
station, in Mississippi, Sudan grass, planted in drills 3 feet apart 
about the middle of May, gave two cuttings totaling -1 tons of hay. 
With the exception of lespedeza, which it exceeded in yield, it was 
superior to any other hay tried at the station. (Detailed discussion 
of Sudan grass may be found in Farmers' Bulletins 605, 1125, and 
1126.) 
Sorghum is sown broadcast and cut for hay to some extent in the 
section described. It is a good yielder, but the large, juicy steins 
make it difficult to cure and it is more valuable and more easily 
handled as a silage crop. (See Farmers' Bulletin 1158.) 
Crab grass, Mexican clover, and beggarweed are volunteer crops 
which are important for hay, as they cost nothing except to harvest. 
Crimson clover is grown to a limited extent as a hay crop. The 
hay is of good quality and is relished by cattle. Other crops seem to 
be better adapted as hay crops. 
Hairy or sand vetch is planted in the fall with oats or rye and 
the crop is grazed during winter and early spring, yet it makes a 
heavy yield of hay after the removal of the cattle. (See p. 29.) 
Cottonseed hulls is a commercial feed obtained as a by-product 
of the manufacture of cottonseed oil. It has been extensively used 
as a roughage and is about equal to corn silage, but is much more 
expensive and is being replaced by cheaper home-grown roughages. 
The velvet bean (Farmers' Bulletins 962 and 1125), an annual 
leguminous, twining vine, is now grown in the Piney "Woods more 
extensively than any other crop except corn, with which it is almost 
always planted. The velvet bean was grown first in Florida and has 
been cultivated extensively only in recent years. In 10 years, how- 
ever, the acreage has grown from an insignificant figure to a point 
where practically every acre of corn in the Piney Woods is now 
planted to velvet beans, the most important forage and feed crop 
grown there. 1 
At the present time cornstalk and velvet-bean pasture is the 
principal winter-forage crop of the Piney Woods both for maintain- 
ing cattle through the winter and for fattening them. The practice 
of pasturing cattle on velvet-bean fields has become such an im- 
portant factor in wintering cattle that most farmers provide no other 
1 Farm practices that increase crop yields in the Gulf-coast region are discussed in 
Farmers* Bulletin 986. 
